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Black and Gray Morality: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"'Let me give you some advice, Captain,' he said, 'It may help you to make sense of the world. I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people. You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.'"''
|'''Lord Vetinari'''
{{quote|''"When will you fools learn that there are no battles fought by heroes?"''
|'''Talpa'''
It is often found in fictional media that the [[Black and White Morality|protagonist/antagonist conflict]] takes the form of the [[Knight in Shining Armor|shining knight]] whose breath smells of flowers and has holy light shining from his every orifice versus the very fount of all evil who [[Eats Babies]] as a hobby, and [[Kick the Dog|Kicks Dogs]] as a profession.
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It's simple: leave the job half-done. Only the white gets removed, leaving behind a world where the choice is between mundane corruption and baby-eating supervillainy. This is the essence of '''Black and Gray Morality'''; the only choices are between kinda evil and soul-crushingly evil.
Obviously, the heroes of such settings tend to be [[Anti-Hero
A good litmus test for this trope is as follows:
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** This also applies to Vlad's friends Aliera and Morrolan. Both are ruthless and quite selfish, but are nicer to humans/arguably less of a danger to Dragaera than their fellow nobles. Thus, in ''Dragon'', Vlad sarcastically notes the irony of calling Morrolan's army in which he is a member the "good guys", since all they are doing is trying to take some artifacts of doom/empathetic weapons so that a somewhat worse noble can't have them. Similarly, the plot of the upcoming novel, ''Iorich'' involves Vlad trying to defend Aliera after she is arrested on a charge of using illegal magic (the same type her father used and accidentally destroyed the old capitol and killed everyone there). This isn't because Aliera is innocent. Rather, it's because so many nobles break this law, that there must be a conspiracy at play for Aliera to be arrested for something she does in essentially plain sight.
* ''[[Conan the Barbarian]]'', especially Robert E. Howard's original stories. The hero is a mercenary/pirate/bandit/professional thief albeit one with a code of honor. Most everyone else is worse.
* [[J. K. Rowling]] was very fond indeed of doing this with her characters in the ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'' series. [[Word of God]] says that there were concerted efforts made to remind the readers that Harry is a flawed person (see his ''[[
{{quote|'''Sirius Black:''' The world is not divided into good people and Death Eaters.}}
* Martha Wells' ''Death of the Necromancer'' has [[Anti-Villain|Nicholas]] [[Aristocrats Are Evil|Valiarde,]] a coldblooded thief, murderer and all around [[Magnificent Bastard]]. Nic has spent years sabotaging his enemy on a [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]]; at the start of the narrative, Nic's nearing the completion of his [[Xanatos Gambit|ultimate scheme]] when he and his subordinates run afoul of an unknown person using [[Black Magic]]. Somehow, this leads to the group spending the rest of the book fighting an insane mass murderer. And the reason they do it is at least partly because it's ''bad for business.''
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Settings]]
[[Category:Morality Tropes]]
[[Category:Cynicism Tropes]]
[[Category:The Wild West]]
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